Wren had never spent the night beneath a bridge before.
“You’re acting like a child,” Tamsin snapped from the shadows as she shoved her rucksack beneath her head and draped her cloak across her like a blanket.
“But trolls live under bridges.” Wren hung back, tugging on her braid anxiously. She was having trouble shaking the stories she had been told as a child, the warnings she had been given by a father who was afraid of everything magical and a mother who knew nothing of the wider world.
“I take it back. A child has more sense than you.” Wren couldn’t see Tamsin’s face, but she was certain the witch had rolled her eyes. “Trolls are only native to the South. They thrive in warm, marshy climates.” Tamsin turned over, her back to Wren, her voice muffled. “Now get out of sight and go to sleep.”
Wren hesitated, staring up at the starry sky, but eventually she gave in, settling herself as far from Tamsin as possible.
The witch snored, but sleep evaded Wren.
They had planned to stop at an inn. Tamsin had hoped for a bath. Wren had hoped for other people, for anyone who wasn’t Tamsin with her bitter chuckle and her constant whining about her feet. The girl was likely no older than Wren’s own seventeen years, and yet she complained more than any old woman—even Saroya, the woman from Wells who had spent years playing the harp for Oöna, the queen of the giants. Saroya’s hands were gnarled and ruined, yet she always had a spare smile for Wren on market day.
If Wren hadn’t seen Tamsin filled with a momentary flash of love, she wouldn’t have believed the witch’s lips could do anything other than sneer. And kiss.
But that was beside the point.
Sure enough, even as Tamsin slept, her face was screwed up with displeasure. Wren thought Tamsin’s muscles must be exhausted from such strain. Wren herself was exhausted simply from staring at Tamsin’s sour expression for an entire day.
Even the nearness of the witch was draining. Wren seemed to be drawn to Tamsin the same way magic was drawn to Wren. While she had no desire to be any nearer to Tamsin than she absolutely had to be, she couldn’t seem to help it. Tamsin, too, had kept her close. The witch seemed to believe she had free rein over Wren’s power. Thrice that day the witch had poked her shoulder with a long finger, sending ice through Wren’s body as her magic moved toward Tamsin.
As if the journey hadn’t been difficult enough. Wren rolled out her neck. Her legs felt weak and gooey as she stretched out on the dirt. She walked often, but not nearly so far. And not with such chaos, the ribbons of natural and dark magic twisting around one another like serpents, the sweet, sour smell of them clouding her nostrils.
They had come to a town as the sun set, the scent of sulfur overwhelming Wren the moment they’d set foot on the cobblestones. The light from the small lantern Tamsin carried had been strong enough to illuminate windows and doorways boarded up from the outside. The wood, nailed to the front doors of nearly half the cottages, was warped and cracked as though an animal had attempted to escape captivity. Tamsin had dismissed the houses as abandoned, but Wren could see the black ribbons of dark magic hanging above the huts. There were plague-riddled people trapped inside.
The realization had turned her stomach. Wren knew that no matter how desperate she was for a bed, she could not stay in a town with people who would treat others in such a way. And so they had walked on, and settled in the dried-up creek beneath a stone bridge instead.
The witch gave a gigantic snore, thick and phlegmy. It was unfair that sleep came to Tamsin so easily. Wren could not recall a night that she hadn’t spent tossing and turning, her mind replaying her actions and her words, analyzing what she could have done to appear more normal, things she could have said to have been more polite. Worrying over how she could have better served her father. Wren could hardly remember the last time she’d woken feeling refreshed.
She didn’t know why she’d assumed things would be any different now. Yet everything else was. Wren herself was different, lying under a bridge in a small town, far from home and everything she’d ever known.
Wren, who had never been farther than the marketplace in Ladaugh, had often dreamed about the wider world, and yet she had never understood exactly how vast it would be when she got there. The sky stretched on forever; the rocks beneath her feet were endless. With each step, she stretched a bit of herself. The small girl with the small life in the small town was starting to grow. There was so much to see.
She might never be finished looking.
Wren had sacrificed so much, not knowing exactly what that meant. But now, surrounded by flowers with colors she had never learned to name, watching people pass with clothes cut from fabrics she’d never touched, hearing voices with accents she could not place—a reminder of so many cities she still did not know—Wren again felt something dark rear its ugly head. That evil, suffocating thought that she had made her father sick because she had yearned for more.
Her father’s face swam before her. Pieces of her memory were hazy—his eyes still evaded her—but it was there. He was there, still, in both her head and her heart.
But not for long, she reminded herself, fighting back a wave of nausea. For Wren had given away the one thing upon which she could always depend: her father. She’d left him behind, fading, like embers dying in the hearth. Had chosen to do so.
And when he was well and truly gone, scrubbed from every inch of her heart, Wren didn’t know who she would be or if the trade would feel justified. Would it be worth it in the end, when she was finally allowed to embrace all the pieces of herself she had spent so much time trying to deny?
Magic had killed her brother, and Wren felt that weight fully each time the wind shifted and she caught a taste of sunshine. Each time a star shot across the sky and her own heart glowed. Wren was more than her life had ever allowed her to be. When she no longer loved her father, would she love her freedom more than she had ever loved him?
Her throat tightened, making it difficult to breathe. Wren inhaled slowly, trying to focus on the flow of air through her lungs rather than the ragged sound of her breath catching. She had gone a bit light-headed.
And then a voice, so faint she almost missed it. One tiny, terrified word: “Help.”
Wren sat up so quickly that the world around her began to spin.
Tamsin didn’t stir.
For a moment there was nothing but the night. Then, the voice again. Louder this time. Desperate. Haunted.
“Help.”
Wren turned toward Tamsin, who was still scowling in her sleep. She moved to shake her but stopped before her fingers could close around the witch’s shoulder. Tamsin was already the crankiest person Wren had ever met, and that was in her waking hours. She shivered at the thought of the ire she would invoke if she pulled the witch from sleep.
Carefully, so as not to disturb a single pebble, Wren got to her feet. She stumbled through patches of sharp summer grass on shaking legs. When she was far enough away that she would not wake the witch, she too called out. “Hello?”
“Hello?” The voice again, excited and eager. “I’m here.”
The night was still, the starlight illuminating nothing but the rocks at her feet. “Where?”
“Here,” the voice insisted. Wren wheeled all the way around, but there was no one there. “No,” the voice said, sighing heavily. “Not there. Down here.” Something sticky skimmed her ankle. Wren shrieked, jumping back. “Careful,” the voice snapped, affronted. Wren peered down into the shadowy grass.
It was a frog.
Wren didn’t know whether to laugh or run away. “I don’t understand.” She was probably delirious.
The frog peered up at her with buggy eyes, its long tongue lapping out to catch a passing fly. “I’m a lord,” it said simply. “Cursed by an evil witch.”
“I know one of those,” she muttered despite herself.
The frog looked relieved, insomuch as a frog could. “Then you’ll help me?”
Wren bent down to kneel in the grass, pebbles pressing uncomfortably into her knees. “Help you how?”
“My father will be most grateful,” the frog continued, as though he had not heard her. “He’s a duke, you know. Of course you’ll be rewarded quite handsomely.” The creature was speaking very fast.
“Help you how?” Wren asked again, curiosity getting the best of her.
“Oh!” The frog bounced up and down on his spongy toes. “It’s really very simple. All you have to do is give me a kiss.”
“A kiss?” Wren frowned.
“That’s it, just one peck and it’s over. It’s nothing, really. Just pick me up, give me a quick smack, and I’ll be forever in your debt.”
Wren shifted her weight onto her heels. It seemed too simple. The answer made her suspicious, although she didn’t understand exactly why.
“Why were you cursed?” she asked, trying to buy herself time.
The frog blinked up at her. “It was a simple misunderstanding,” he said. “She had a horrible temper. Wouldn’t even let me explain.”
That certainly sounded like someone Wren knew. She felt a pang of sympathy for the frog. The lord?
“All right.” It was just a kiss, after all. Something she could easily give. An action she could take to help someone, the way she couldn’t yet help her father. The way she couldn’t help herself. And it was such a simple ask. Lips pressed to lips. Nothing more. Hadn’t she just kissed Tamsin? It certainly wasn’t as though that had meant anything.
Wren offered her hand to the frog, who hopped into it. His skin was clammy and slick against her palm. It wasn’t the most comforting sensation, but, she supposed, it would only take a second. One second to free a person from a terrible spell. Surely that was worth a single moment of absurdity.
Wren brought her hand toward her face. The frog blinked at her. His long pink tongue flapped out of his mouth onto her palm. She shuddered, her own tongue flooding with a sharp, metallic tang. Perhaps if she just closed her eyes…
“Wren.” Her eyes flew open. “What are you doing?” The witch stalked toward her, hair mussed, one cheek pink and imprinted with the stitching from her rucksack.
Wren glanced desperately from the witch to the frog, which was waiting patiently in her hand. “He needs help,” she said quickly, raising the frog up so Tamsin could see him. “He’s a lord who was turned into a frog.”
Tamsin took a step forward, squinting at the creature in Wren’s palm. Her face was unreadable in the starlight. “First of all,” she said sharply, “that’s a toad.”
Wren squinted down. “But… he was cursed by a witch.”
Tamsin shot her a withering look. “Oh, really?”
“Yes,” she said, confidence waning as she stared at the nervously flopping creature. “So… you’re not a lord?” She felt quite foolish, addressing a toad.
Tamsin snickered. “No, he’s a nasty little swamp sprite who should be squashed,” she said, swatting the toad out of Wren’s hand. Wren gasped as the creature fell. Tamsin rolled her eyes. “Don’t know how long it must have taken that one to hop up here from the South, but you’re lucky I woke up. If you’d kissed him, you would have turned into a toad as well.”
Wren’s eyes widened in horror. She tried to wipe all traces of the toad off her hand and onto the grass. She had only been trying to help. All Wren ever wanted to do was help, and yet, time and time again, she was the one who got hurt.
“Rule of thumb,” Tamsin said, staring down at her. “Never trust something that talks when it shouldn’t.”
Wren stopped scraping at the skin of her palm. “But what if it had been a lord?”
“You still should have walked away.” The witch shrugged lightly. “You can’t save everyone. Especially not if you’re a toad.” She looked as though she was biting back a grin.
“It isn’t funny,” Wren said sharply, getting to her feet and turning back toward the bridge.
“It’s sort of funny,” Tamsin said, following behind her. “If only I could laugh.”
Wren didn’t reply.
She was a source, a girl made of magic, and still she had nearly been played by a toad. It was another thing she hadn’t known. Another brand-new failing. Normally, Wren wouldn’t have minded the lesson. But Tamsin had been a witness.
It wasn’t that Wren cared what Tamsin thought of her. It was that she knew Tamsin was judging her for not knowing anything about magic. For agreeing to a journey she was nowhere near capable of completing. For caring about her father so much that she was willing to sacrifice everything for him, even when he hadn’t asked her to.
It was that she knew Tamsin could see everything Wren hated about herself. That Tamsin wasn’t wrong for thinking Wren was unworthy of her power. That, maybe, Wren truly was.
Wren woke with a start to the blinding white of the morning sky. She was shivering, as though her being had been drenched in icy water. Her tongue, thick with sleep, held the faint taste of cherries. She inhaled shakily. Honey hung in the air.
Magic.
As she scrambled to sit upright, her foot nudged something solid. She wiped the sleep from her eyes as she reached for the small leather-bound book.
Wren frowned. It was a nice book, the black leather smooth and worn in a well-loved way. But she hadn’t noticed it among Tamsin’s things before and didn’t think the witch would simply leave something lying around for prying eyes.
Her mood darkened as she remembered that the witch had seen her nearly press her lips to a toad’s. It couldn’t hurt for Wren to gain a little leverage. Yet when she tried to pry open the book’s cover, it would not budge. She grunted and pulled and pushed and, yes, even kicked, but still the book would not open.
Its lack of cooperation only served to make her more curious. What sort of secrets did Tamsin possess that she’d lock into such a well-protected book? Perhaps it held special spells for being a grump, or maybe a list of people she wanted to hex. Wren giggled, forgetting herself.
Tamsin’s eyes snapped open. At first she looked vulnerable, caught between sleep and wakefulness. But then her eyes caught on the book in Wren’s hands, and she sat up, her face as white as a sheet. Wren could have sworn she saw fear flash behind the witch’s eyes.
“Where did you get that?” Tamsin demanded, face flushing from a furious red to a sickly green.
“I didn’t—” Wren gaped at the witch’s outsize reaction. It was only a book. “I just found it. There.” She pointed to the patch of dirt where it had been. Tamsin’s eyes barely left the book. Wren offered it to her gently.
The second the book was in her hand, the witch relaxed. But her relief did not last long. “Get up.” Tamsin snapped her fingers, and her pack was in her hand. “We have to go.”
“Why?” Wren clumsily gathered her things, her limbs still heavy with exhaustion. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” Tamsin tucked the book carefully into the waistband of her long skirt and stomped out from beneath the bridge.
The morning air was crisp and bright as they climbed up the bank of the river and emerged onto the road. The sky was streaked with pink. Birds rustled their wings, waking up their voices with tinny shrieks.
“What is that?” Wren rushed to catch up with the witch, nodding pointedly at the book, which was resting at Tamsin’s left hip.
Tamsin pressed a hand idly to the soft leather cover. “Nothing.”
“It’s clearly not nothing,” Wren said. “You practically fainted when you saw me holding it.”
Tamsin shot her a withering look.
“It wouldn’t open for me, if that makes you feel any better,” Wren added darkly, almost as an afterthought. The witch did look a bit relieved. “Which makes me wonder,” she continued, reaching for the witch, her fingers grazing Tamsin’s wrist, “what it is that you don’t want me to see. Do you write poetry? Are you the first romantic poet without a heart?”
Wren was positively tickled by the thought.
“Stop,” Tamsin snapped, her voice harsh and broken.
Wren stopped, hand outstretched. They stared at each other in silence.
“It’s private,” Tamsin finally said, her tone soft but pained.
“All right,” Wren said, just as quietly. “I’m sorry. It’s private.”
She did not appreciate being chastised. She had only been curious, wanting a bit of insight into the girl Tamsin was. Wren had shared so much already: her father, her love, her naivety. But Tamsin was a closed book. Literally.
She trudged after the witch, her feet kicking up more dust than perhaps was necessary as they walked past a wide field littered with hay bales the size of horses. The moment she began to wish she had someone kind to talk to, a bird flitted past her. Almost without thinking, Wren offered up her finger. The little creature landed on it, and she nearly squealed with surprise. Its tiny body was squat and round, its feathers dappled brown and white. It was a wren, the little bird from which she’d gotten her name. It felt like a sign.
“Hello, friend,” she cooed softly to the creature, and its orange beak trembled furiously as it let out a string of high-pitched whistles in response.
“Oh, you have got to be kidding me.” Tamsin had stopped, her eyes lingering on the hand that held the baby bird. Wren stared back defiantly, but her cheeks burned with embarrassment. “Don’t try to kiss it,” Tamsin warned, rolling her eyes as she turned back to the road.
Wren stuck her tongue out at the witch’s back.
“She’s just angry,” she told the bird. “She doesn’t like it when I talk, but you don’t mind, do you?” She used a finger to carefully pet the wren’s soft feathers. It let out an appreciative whistle. “That’s right,” Wren said quietly. “You like me just fine. The problem isn’t me, after all. It’s her.” The tiny bird gave her finger a soft nip before flittering away to the trees, still warbling a flurry of whistles.
Wren’s eyes bored into the back of Tamsin. She was such an impossible presence, always saying what she wanted, taking what she needed, never worrying about anyone else or what they might think of her. Wren felt a twinge of envy as she watched the witch walk, head held high, shoulders back, as though she didn’t care whose eyes looked upon her face. As though she wanted to be seen.
Wren had spent so much of her life trying to be smaller, trying to take up less space. She feared the eyes of others, worried someone would see the power she had worked so hard to suppress. Wren kept herself small and unassuming in hopes that if no one ever told her what she wanted to hear, she could tell herself that what she wanted didn’t matter. Even now she walked hunched over, her shoulders sagging, her back bent. Her boots shuffled against the dirt, as though she was too afraid to even lift her feet fully from the ground.
The more she noticed their differences, the harder it became for Wren to pull her eyes from the witch. She straightened her shoulders, shook out her limbs. She wanted some of the witch’s certainty. She wanted to give the witch some of her self-restraint. So focused was Wren on comparing their personality traits that she didn’t notice the witch stop walking. She barreled directly into Tamsin. A jolt of cold, sharp as ice, ran down the back of her neck.
A barn was on fire. The smell was terrible, like the moment after a slaughter, cloyingly rank and tinged with fear. The flames darted and leaped, bright blue and blazing. This was no ordinary fire. Smoke rose from the barn, thick and toxic, mingling with the dark magic that hovered above the roof like a cloud.
Tiny sparks exploded in the morning sky, so bright they burned Wren’s eyes. Embers rained down from the roof, catching on the dry summer grass below. The field began to smoke. Wren looked on in panic as she gauged the length of the farmland, the giant bales of hay they’d passed. Everything would take to the fire in an instant. The whole countryside would burn until it reached the houses with the boarded-up windows and doors. The village would burn. The people inside would burn with it.
Panic rose in Wren’s throat. She reached for Tamsin, who was watching the raging flames with wide eyes.
“We have to do something.”
The road was empty, the field abandoned—the farmer and his family perhaps still sleeping soundly in their beds. There was no one around to help, no one to stop the fire but them.
But Tamsin shook her head. “We can’t just douse it with water. It’s dark magic. It would take nearly a day to quell flames like that, even if I used your power, too.”
“But we can stop it,” Wren said, tugging at the witch’s wrist. She couldn’t believe she had to fight Tamsin about this. She knew the girl was cold, but this was negligence bordering on pure evil. “We can’t just let the country burn.”
“What part of ‘it would take nearly a day’ do you not understand?” Tamsin didn’t snap, but her harsh tone still stung. “If someone sees us here, they’ll think we’re involved. If they find out I’m a witch, they won’t hesitate to throw me into the flames too. If you want to leave this land alive, we have to go. Now.”
The sour, stale taste of dread settled on Wren’s tongue. “You’re saying we do nothing?”
“We can’t save everyone, Wren.” Wren could have sworn Tamsin’s eyes flashed with sorrow. “It’s the fire or your father. Take your pick.”
Horror pooled in Wren’s stomach as she watched the barn blaze, watched the flames race across the summer grass. Her body was slick with sweat. And yet, even as she tried to consider, there was only one answer she was able to give.
“My father,” she whispered hoarsely. Tamsin nodded sharply and carried on walking. The beam of the barn sizzled and snapped. It fell to the ground with a great, thundering crack. To Wren, it sounded like a heart breaking.
Living with the feeling that the world was on fire, Wren now knew, was nothing compared to watching it burn.